The Medawar Lecture was an annual lecture on the philosophy of science organised by the Royal Society of London in memory of Sir Peter Medawar. It was last delivered in 2004 after which it was merged with the Wilkins Lecture and the Bernal Lecture to form the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture. [1]
Year | Name | Lecture | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1986 | Karl Raimund Popper | A new interpretation of Darwinism. [2] | — |
1990 | Lewis Thomas | The new transitional structure of basic science: prospects and apprehensions. | — |
1992 | Max Ferdinand Perutz | Species adaptation in a protein molecule. | — |
1995 | John Michael Ziman | Post-academic science. | — |
1998 | Lewis Wolpert | Is science dangerous? | — |
2001 | Richard Langton Gregory | Knowledge for vision: vision for knowledge. | — |
2004 | Peter Lipton | The truth about science | — |
Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. According to Popper, a theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can be scrutinised with decisive experiments. Popper was opposed to the classical justificationist account of knowledge, which he replaced with critical rationalism, namely "the first non-justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".
Max Ferdinand Perutz was an Austrian-born British molecular biologist, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew, for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and myoglobin. He went on to win the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1971 and the Copley Medal in 1979. At Cambridge he founded and chaired (1962–79) The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), fourteen of whose scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Perutz's contributions to molecular biology in Cambridge are documented in The History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4 , published by the Cambridge University Press in 1992.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery is a 1959 book about the philosophy of science by the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rewrote his book in English from the 1934 German original, titled Logik der Forschung. Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft, which literally translates as, "Logic of Research: On the Epistemology of Modern Natural Science"'.
Sir Peter Brian Medawar was a Brazilian-British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance have been fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ transplants. For his scientific works, he is regarded as the "father of transplantation". He is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings. Richard Dawkins referred to him as "the wittiest of all scientific writers"; Stephen Jay Gould as "the cleverest man I have ever known".
John Desmond Bernal was an Irish scientist who pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal wrote popular books on science and society. He was a communist activist and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
David William Miller is an English philosopher and prominent exponent of critical rationalism. He taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. where he is Reader in Philosophy. He has been Honorary Treasurer of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science.
Philip Ball is a British science writer. For over twenty years he has been an editor of the journal Nature, for which he continues to write regularly. He is a regular contributor to Prospect magazine and a columnist for Chemistry World, Nature Materials, and BBC Future.
Jeremy Shearmur is a British former reader in philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, who retired at the end of 2013. He is currently an emeritus fellow, lives in Dumfries, Scotland, and is undertaking research and a limited amount of lecturing and Ph.D. supervision. He was educated at the London School of Economics.
John Worrall is a professor of philosophy of science at the London School of Economics. He is also associated with the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the same institution.
Medawar may refer to:
Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian-born American biologist, physician, and immunologist. He emigrated with his family to New York in 1923 for professional opportunities, working for the Rockefeller Institute.
The Royal Society presents numerous awards, lectures and medals to recognise scientific achievement. The oldest is the Croonian Lecture, created in 1701 at the request of the widow of William Croone, one of the founding members of the Royal Society. The Croonian Lecture is still awarded on an annual basis, and is considered the most important Royal Society prize for the biological sciences. Although the Croonian Lecture was created in 1701, it was first awarded in 1738, seven years after the Copley Medal which is the oldest Royal Society medal still in use and is awarded for "outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science"
Hans-Joachim Niemann, is a German philosopher and PhD chemist, who has become known especially as a translator and editor of works by Karl Popper, including first editions and first translations. As a scholarly writer, he first published scientific papers, then many essays and several books on Karl Popper's philosophy and Critical Rationalism, including a 400-page Lexicon of Critical Rationalism. His Popper studies helped to establish Karl Popper as a major ethicist and as an important biophilosopher.
The Bernal Lecture was an annual lecture on the social function of science organised by the Royal Society of London and endowed by Professor John Desmond Bernal. It was last delivered in 2004, after which it was merged with the Wilkins Lecture and Medawar Lecture to form the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture.
The Wilkins Lecture was a lecture organised by the Royal Society of London on the subject of the history of science and named after John Wilkins, the first Secretary of the Society. The last Wilkins lecture was delivered in 2003, after which it was merged with the Bernal Lecture and the Medawar Lecture to form the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture.
The Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Lecture is a public lecture organised annually by the Royal Society of London.
The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality is a 1994 book by the philosopher Karl Popper.
Hasok Chang is a Korean-born American historian and philosopher of science currently serving as the Hans Rausing Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a board member of the Philosophy of Science Association. He previously served as president of the British Society for the History of Science from 2012 to 2014.
June Barrow-Green is a professor of History of Mathematics at the Open University and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
Michela Massimi is an Italian and British philosopher of science, a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and the president-elect of the Philosophy of Science Association. Her research has involved scientific perspectivism and perspectival realism, the Pauli exclusion principle, and the work of Immanuel Kant.